Russia’s deadly innovations ahead of sacred holiday cost 40% of all casualties in Pokrovsk – Euromaidan Press

From a bird’s-eye view, the city of Pokrovsk resembles a post-apocalyptic video game like Stalker. Here, the Russians are trying to overplay the time. This is because they have a task—to seize the town in Donetsk Oblast and reach the borders of neighboring Dnipropetrovsk Oblast by 9 May.

Russian forces have concentrated up to 50-60 thousand personnel and a large amount of military equipment on the Pokrovsk front. However, they are suffering substantial losses here, approximately 30-40% of the total casualties, including killed, wounded, and captured Russian soldiers, Freedom reports. 

Russian troops are reported to be approximately 5–15 kilometers (3–9 miles) from the Dnipropetrovsk border. To get there, they have started using simultaneous infantry assault tactics, says Andrii Nazarenko, the commander of the “Bulava” drone systems unit of the 72nd Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Only one out of every ten Russian assault troops reaches their assigned target in such assaults.

However, Russia does not count its casualties on the eastern front lines.

“Their goal is clear — to reach the borders of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast by 9 May. It will not give them any tactical advantage. It’s purely political ambitions,” Nazarenko explains.

In April, Ukrainian military expert Major Oleksii Hetman calculated that the Russian occupiers would need around three years to reach Dnipro, Espreso reports. However, they want to reach it in one week. 

The Russians move in sometimes 3-4 groups of two people, other times several groups of five. Where they can’t advance, they use artillery.

“When they realize they can’t make it through a section of a forest belt, they just start running across the field, two or three people at a time, without being deterred by the bodies of their fallen comrades. They can see us eliminating their colleagues, but still, one out of every ten tries to reach the target and establish a foothold there,” says the Ukrainian military officer.

Victor Trehubov, a Ukrainian representative of the “Khortysia” grouping of troops, states that Russian forces are sending former prisoners and penal troops into the first waves of assaults.

Then, motorcyclists and small infantry groups equipped with electronic warfare (EW) systems join the fight.

According to Nazarenko, Russian forces are scaling up their use of motorcycles on the Pokrovsk front — 70% of assaults here are exclusively by motorcycles. These vehicles rush to positions and try to secure them.

The city caught in the fishing net

Additionally, on the Pokrovsk front, the occupiers are reinforcing their logistical routes with mesh tunnel networks intended to block drones.

Controlling Pokrovsk would allow Russia to cut off critical Ukrainian supply lines, isolate Ukrainian forces in the region, and strengthen its own operational capabilities for further advances deeper into eastern Ukraine. Its capture would represent Russia’s largest territorial gain since taking Bakhmut in 2023, marking a major propaganda victory. 

These tunnels allow the occupiers to deliver supplies to the occupied cities of Selydove and Novohrodivka, from where the assault on the Pokrovsk front is carried out.

Such tunnels were first noticed in the summer of 2023 near Bakhmut, although at that time, they were not full tunnels but rather individual mesh nets designed to trap drones, Militarnyi reveals. 

Later, Russian forces on the Kupiansk front in Kharkiv Oblast began covering vehicle routes with fishing nets to create safer corridors.

Fishing nets are more effective than wire mesh. It almost guarantees the detonation of FPV drones, while drones can get tangled in fishing nets without exploding immediately.

Although this construction is relatively inexpensive, it requires considerable labor hours to install and possibly digging poles and stretching the net, all of which must be done in the zone affected by enemy drones.

Moreover, such large engineering structures require constant maintenance and repair.

The only difference between Pokrovsk and Bakhmut is fiber-optic cables, which the Russian military started using relatively recently to control drones and which make drones immune to EW systems.

Moreover, the entire city of Pokrovsk is entangled with fishing line — this is what the fiber-optic cables look like, as per Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 

The fishing line from drones hangs everywhere in the city: on garages, in yards, and wrapped around trees and poles. With the help of this fiber-optic line, Russian drones fly over Pokrovsk every day and strike its streets.

Ukrainian forces also use drones with fiber optics. Pilots of the 68th Separate Ranger Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which defends Pokrovsk, use them to stop any Russian movement toward its infantry.

Yulia Stepanuk, the communications officer of the 117th Separate Mechanized Brigade, says Russian forces are concentrating on logistical routes, such as roads and railway connections.

“They want to destroy everything,” the communications officer clarifies.

The Ukrainians wearing Russian uniforms

She says the Russians are actively bringing Ukrainians from the occupied territories to fight with other Ukrainians.

Millions of people live under Russian occupation in conditions marked by severe shortages of food, water, medical care, and basic services. Russia systematically uses occupied territories as military bases and logistical hubs to support ongoing offensives. These areas serve as staging grounds for troop deployments, artillery positions, missile launches, and drone operations targeting Ukrainian-controlled zones. 

“Usually, they say the same thing: they were forced to go, they didn’t want to, or they were convicts, or they had deserted their unit and were sent back to jail, and now they have to go to the front,” Stepanuk reports.

Russian POWs also share that they do not receive any payments and lack any documents, Suspilne reports. 

Earlier, the Ukrainian military said that Russian commanders resorted to extreme measures to force their troops into assaulting heavily defended Ukrainian positions in Pokrovsk. 

According to Ukraine’s 117th brigade, Russian soldiers who hesitate or try to avoid frontline combat are being shot in the legs by their own commanders to compel them to continue fighting. 

The suspicious silence

During a pause in fighting, Ukrainian soldiers discuss Russia’s proposed three-day ceasefire until 9 May. The defenders of Pokrovsk are not particularly enthusiastic about it—they believe the Russian army needs the pause to regroup and gather fresh forces for future attacks.

On 28 April, the Kremlin announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had declared a ceasefire for the “80th anniversary of Victory” on 8, 9, and 10 May. Commenting on this proposal from Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reminded that Ukraine supports the US concept of a ceasefire and had also proposed a 30-day pause, calling Putin’s proposition “another attempt at manipulation.

“Everything I see right now doesn’t give me even one percent of faith that there will be any ceasefire, even for a short time. And if it happens, it’ll be just another trick to outsmart us and grab more territory,” says a soldier named Oleksandr.

The Russians definitely won’t stop firing completely, his comrade Ruslan remarks.

“We shouldn’t harbor illusions or fantasize. Even if things quiet down on the front, they’ll still terrorize civilians with missiles, ballistic strikes, and Shaheds. You see what’s happening—they launch over a hundred Shaheds in a single night,” he adds. 

The few residents of Pokrovsk who remain in the city rarely leave their apartments due to the danger of being caught in shelling on the streets. Those who die are buried right in the yards of their homes, as there is no possibility to transport the body to the cemetery for a proper burial.